Status and power at meetings

Three images illustrating aspects of status and power: A women's march sign that reads "EACH TIME A WOMAN STANDS UP FOR HERSELF SHE STANDS FOR ALL WOMEN"; women wearing pink "pussy hats" on an airplane; and a large man in a business suit scowling down at a little worried girl dressed in pink.

Meeting professionals rarely talk about status and power issues. This is unfortunate because the ways that status and power manifest at meetings matter. Why? Because a majority of those who attend most meetings have little say over what happens at them. Typical meeting formats are rigid, and attendees play largely circumscribed roles.

So, let’s explore the roles of status and power at meetings.

Every meeting has a structure

As Jo Freeman wrote half a century ago, every meeting has a structure.

“Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved.”
Jo Freeman aka Joreen, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, 1972

Meetings usually adopt traditional structures that attendees seldom question in public. Such structures contain status and power imbalances that can often reduce the effectiveness of the meeting. Meetings that are consciously designed to best fit the needs and wants of all the stakeholders are rare.

Hierarchy isn’t (necessarily) a problem

When we look at a meeting in progress, it’s usually easy to spot any hierarchy that’s present. For example:

  • The chairperson sits at the end of the table.
  • Speakers, board members, and panelists face everyone else.
  • Name badges signal high-status roles.
  • Only certain people get a microphone.

Hierarchy leads to overt or covert status differences. However, the existence of hierarchical or status differences isn’t necessarily a problem. A high-status, experienced chairperson, for example, may guide a board meeting through a complex agenda far more effectively than if the gathering is structured as a free-floating discussion. Similarly, a clear interactive presentation from an experienced expert to an audience of novices can be an effective way to share important information about a relevant topic.

In addition, when meeting designs support fluid status differences between attendees, hierarchy is rarely a problem. (Here’s how peer conferences support fluid status differences.)

However, hierarchy frequently impedes meeting effectiveness when high-status members use the power imbalance between them and other attendees to impose a meeting structure that suits their purposes.

Status and power at meetings

In 2017, I wrote about Tom Atlee’s discussion of two kinds of power: power-over and power-with (terms that Mary Parker Follett formulated a hundred years ago) and advocated for meetings where power-with holds sway. Richard Bartlett added a third relevant form of power: power-within. Here are his definitions of these “three useful lenses for analyzing…power dynamics”.

  • Power-from-within or empowerment — the creative force you feel when you’re making art, or speaking up for something you believe in.
  • Power-with or social power — influence, status, rank, or reputation that determines how much you are listened to in a group.
  • Power-over or coercion — power used by one person to control another.
    Richard D. Bartlett, Hierarchy Is Not the Problem…It’s the Power Dynamics

Here’s a brief overview of each of these kinds of power dynamics from a meetings perspective.

Power-within

status and powerMy work is about designing meetings that support power-within for every attendee. There are three overlapping sets of tools for this: agreements, facilitation that supports participants’ freedoms and agreements, and status-leveling processes like The Three Questions.

I go into a lot more detail in my books about why these tools are so important. Check out The Power of Participation for deeper explanations.

Power-with

status and powerMaximizing power-with is an obvious force for good for meeting participants (unless, perhaps, you are in a minority with power and want to maintain the status quo.) We are social creatures, and it feels good when we are listened to and experience being truly heard by others—even if they respectfully disagree with us. Consequential bonuses that provide additional joy include discovering agreement, making connections, and moving to action.

Power-over

status and powerPower-over is the most common power dynamic at work in meetings.

When power-over meeting dynamics are appropriate and relatively benign

Specifically, power-over dynamics can work reasonably well for meetings when a high-status leader:

  • Has significantly more expertise and experience than anyone else present;
  • Is good at communicating what’s necessary via broadcast; and
  • Is benevolent.

An example would be a high-level, experienced bureaucrat who has the job of teaching the implications of a complex set of new tax regulations to a group of customer service employees who answer tax questions.

Even in situations like this, reducing perceived status can improve the meeting. For example, creating a relaxed and supportive environment for questions and discussion plus breaking regularly into small groups to process learning will improve adult learning better than lecturing followed by testing.

Power-over meeting dynamics are often toxic

But if you’ve ever had low status at a meeting—and who hasn’t?—you’ve likely often experienced toxic power-over dynamics. For example:

  • Teachers publicly humiliate students in class.
  • Bosses pressure subordinates to make unwise or unfair decisions at meetings or avoid uncomfortable topics.
  • Arrogant people interrupt others and monopolize discussions at conference sessions.

We experience power imbalances like these at an early age, and many come to assume they’re “just the way things are”. I’ve written elsewhere about how power-over meeting design became so pervasive (and there’s an expanded version in Chapter 2 of The Power of Participation.)

What’s been fascinating to me during my decades of designing and facilitating meetings is how good meeting design can minimize power differentials between participants, and invariably just about everyone discovers that the meeting improves for them! (Even including the vast majority of the folks with more power!)

Conclusions about power dynamics at meetings

Two essential things meeting designers and facilitators should do to create effective meetings is to support power-within and maximize power-with for participants. Do these well and you will simultaneously reduce the deleterious effects of power-over at your events.

This post was inspired by Richard D. Bartlett‘s article Hierarchy Is Not the Problem…It’s the Power Dynamics. Richard covers work relationships while I have focused on applying his analysis to meetings. Richard also includes suggested steps towards healthy power dynamics at work—well worth reading!

Images courtesy of:

Jacob Lund Photography: Activist Demonstrating Women Power from NounProject.com

Ted Eytan (2017.01.20 Alaska Air Flight 6 in Pink LAX-DCA) CC BY-SA 2.0

Guns and Power

An illustration of guns and power: a man holds a gun, with more guns on a table nearbyI grew up in England where “access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world.” When I moved to the United States in 1977, I didn’t realize I had chosen to live in a country where guns and power are inextricably entwined.

I’ve only fired a gun once in my life. Hiking in former Czechoslovakia in the ’60s, I met a farmer who asked if I’d like to fire his shotgun. Standing in the middle of his field, I braced the gun against my shoulder, pointed it at the sky, and fired. The blast was deafening and my shoulder hurt.

The experience did not impress me. I had no desire ever to fire a gun again.

Guns in the United States

Although a majority of United States households don’t own guns, a substantial minority do.

Owning guns is far more common in the U.S. than in any other country; there are more guns in private hands than people to hold them. The average U.S. gun owner has five guns, and about a third of all the civilian guns in the world are in the hands of Americans.

Guns and power-over

As children, we necessarily submit to power-over: the power of our parents and school. As we grow into adulthood, most cultures expect us to become more independent and possess our own power.

Unfortunately, for a host of reasons, many people fail to come into their own power. I, for example, grew up in an environment that relentlessly shamed me for making mistakes. I learned that I could only feel powerful if I did everything perfectly. It has taken decades for me to unlearn this false teaching, and work to learn who I actually am and be myself.

When we fail to come into our own power, we fear not being in control. One way to lessen this fear is to own guns as a substitute for one’s personal power.

“…most research comparing gun owners to non-gun owners suggests that ownership is rooted in fear…
Joseph M. Pierre, Nature, The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning

In the United States, gun manufacturers who “position their products as totems of manhood and symbols of white male identity” use such fear to sell guns. Here’s an ad for the Tavor semiautomatic rifle that claims the gun will restore the “balance of power” for men who own it.

guns and power
Advertisement in July 2013 American Rifleman

Obviously, guns have legitimate uses for hunting, and I have the privilege of living in a part of the world where it’s unlikely that someone will attack me while living my life. However, the high incidence of gun ownership by privileged U.S. citizens owes a lot to the dysfunctional fear of not being in control.

Even though the reality is that no one ever actually has control, just the myth of control.

Power and pleasure

Some people, mainly men in my experience, enjoy firing guns. When asked why they typically say it’s fun or they enjoy the challenge to get good at it (see, e.g. this Quora thread).

This challenge I kind of get. Though I think there are much more interesting and useful challenges to take on than getting better at knocking something over or blowing it apart from a distance.

It’s the fun part I don’t understand.

The closest I’ve come to enjoying a powerful machine is the time I drove a race car in Abu Dhabi.

Driving a race car

Me, right after driving this race car.

I had fun!

I’m cautious about trying to “explain” why driving the Jaguar for twenty minutes felt so exciting. But I think it was because my race car experience was an exaggerated version of something I do daily which is pretty miraculous — drive a car.

I couldn’t live in rural Marlboro without a car. (Here’s an account of what Vermont white settlers — who had horses at least — had to do two centuries ago to survive.) Although there are no stores in Marlboro, I can drive to nearby stores in twenty minutes. That’s a journey that in the past would have been a day’s outing in good weather. Driving is really cool.

Driving the race car took my daily driving to a whole new level. I drove faster than I’ve ever driven in my life. The race track was perfectly smooth, and the Jaguar was incredibly responsive. It wasn’t a useful experience, but it gave me a whole new and improved (sensation-wise) experience of something familiar.

Nevertheless, I have no significant desire to drive a race car again. (Though I think I’d do it if someone offered me the opportunity with no effort on my part, as happened in Abu Dhabi, that’s not likely to happen!)

Race cars versus guns

Guns are also powerful machines. But, unless you hunt for a living, there’s no analogous daily experience to shooting modern guns, which have been designed over the years to become more powerful (aka deadlier).

So why is shooting a gun “fun”? The men who say this seem to assume it’s obvious. I’ll close these musings by wondering if their desire to shoot guns arises from fear of not being in control in a United States culture that links masculinity to the wielding of power.

Who has more power, a consultant or a janitor?

Consultant power: An illustration of a consultant and a janitor, with a red fist holding a lightning bolt between them.Picture the renowned senior consultant breezing into the gleaming corporate HQ of Fortune 500 MegaCorp, for a well-paid gig advising C-suite executives. Now, picture the newly-hired janitor who spends their evenings mopping & vacuuming floors, cleaning restrooms, and emptying trash and recycling cans in a small MegaCorp branch office. Who has more power, the consultant or the janitor?

Obviously, the consultant has more power. They get to influence what happens at MegaCorp at a high level. Consultants have helped major industries successfully adapt to changing circumstances. (They’ve also been responsible for controversial decisions.) The lowly janitor? They just keep the office clean and tidy. Right?

Wrong. Actually, the janitor has more power! Here’s why.

Influence but no authority

Both the consultant and the janitor have responsibilities. MegaCorp contracted the consultant to give the C-suite good advice. MegaCorp pays the janitor to caretake the office.

The janitor has more power because they have the authority to do their assigned caretaking. Even though MegaCorp limits through the job description the scope and status of their work, the janitor has the power to determine how to clean floors and empty trashcans.

The consultant has no power to make any changes at MegaCorp. Consultants have influence — but no authority, no power. My mentor Jerry Weinberg defined consulting as the art of influencing people at their request. Any seasoned consultant, however successful, sometimes fails to influence their clients.

“As a consultant in various fields for 42 years, this is a familiar world: one where I have influence with a client but less authority than a janitor. Clients are free to ignore my advice. Sometimes they do, but clearly I have useful influence that typically leads to significant change. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t continue to be hired and — usually 😀 — appreciated.)”
—Adrian Segar, The declining influence of leadership positional power in a network society

The janitor has the power to caretake their building in the way they want and need. MegaCorp gives them that power while not granting any to the consultant.

The Hard Law

Having influence but no power is one of the hard things about being a consultant, as expressed by Jerry Weinberg’s Hard Law:

“If you can’t accept failure, you’ll never succeed as a consultant.”
—Jerry Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting

This is indeed a tough truth to swallow. But Jerry adds an “atom of hope” with a reframe:

“Some people do succeed as consultants, so it must be possible to deal with failure.”
—ibid

Events operate by stories

Events operate by stories: the cover of the book "record of a spaceborn few" by becky chambersEvents operate by stories.

“Our species doesn’t operate by reality. It operates by stories. Cities are a story. Money is a story. Space was a story, once. A king tells us a story about who we are and why we’re great, and that story is enough to make us go kill people who tell a different story. Or maybe the people kill the king because they don’t like his story and have begun to tell themselves a different one.”
—Isabel, in Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

I love science fiction, which Pamela Sargent calls “the literature of ideas”. In a world where it sometimes seems change is impossible, science fiction explores how our future will be different. Science fiction is also especially rich with the possibility of introducing cognitive dissonance: the mental discomfort we feel when aware of two contradictory ideas at the same time.

Above all, good science fiction excels at telling stories. Powerful stories. Stories that routinely predict the future: earth orbit satellites, the surveillance state, cell phones, electric submarines, climate change, electronic media, and the Cold War were all foreshadowed by science fiction stories long before they came to pass. Science fiction introduces possible futures, some of which come to pass, by using the power of stories.

Events operate by stories

Like science fiction, events also create futures, and events operate by stories. Just as good stories have a story arc, coherent events have a conference arc. In addition, every event participant creates their own story at an event, just as each reader or viewer individually absorbs and experiences a book or movie story.

The promise of events springs from the reality that we are the stories we tell about ourselves. The stories that events tell and we internalize change us.

It’s incumbent on all of us who create and design events to think carefully and creatively about the stories our events tell. When we do so successfully, the power of stories shapes and maximizes participants’ individual and collective outcomes — and changes lives.

Power in hotel rooms done right!

Power in hotel rooms: a photograph of two power outlets and two USB ports installed at the head of a hotel bed

I’m reposting this simple idea for power in hotel rooms from a Facebook post by my friend Kristin Arnold.

“Finally!! A smart hotel that put plugs on the head of the bed frame! Way to go Renaissance Atlanta concourse!”

So often I check into a hotel room and discover that every power outlet in the room is already in use. (That’s why I always bring a small power strip on my travels.) Even when there’s a spare outlet or two, they’re often in an inconvenient place. Or there’s no outlet next to the bed or a tabel or desk. Also, sometimes an outlet won’t power a two-prong plug reliably, due to a loose fit.

Hotel industry, please wake up! Make power in hotel rooms available and accessible. Today’s travelers need power to recharge their devices. So provide spare outlets in your rooms! And make these outlets easily accessible — no more crawling on the floor, or moving furniture to get to a hidden outlet! Finally, remember that many folks love to use their laptops in bed, catching up on work, or watching a movie at the end of a long tiring day. As shown above, make us very happy by providing outlets right next to the bed!

We’ll appreciate it — and we’ll return!

Do you have other observations about power outlets in hotels? Share in the comments below!

The declining influence of leadership positional power in a network society

The declining influence of leadership positional power in a network society: A black and white closeup photograph of the corner of a chessboard. A white King piece is on its side, in front of a black Queen.Almost all organization leaders today wield positional power: the power of a boss to make decisions that affect others. This is unlikely to change soon. However, the growth of the network era, where leaders and workers need to connect outside the workplace in order to stay up-to-date professionally and to be open to new and innovative ideas, is creating a shift away from traditional hierarchical power models.

Positional power

Harold Jarche writes frequently about positional power:

“One major change as we enter the network era is that positional power (based on institutions and hierarchies) may no longer be required to have influence in a network society.”
Harold Jarchethe new networked norm

It’s increasingly possible to have influence these days without being anyone’s boss.

Influence but no authority

As a consultant in various fields for 42 years, this is a familiar world: one where I have influence with a client but less authority than a janitor. Clients are free to ignore my advice. Sometimes they do, but clearly, I have useful influence that typically leads to significant change. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t continue to be hired and — usually 😀 — appreciated.)

Today, far more people work in the gig economy, which has grown in large part because the network era has made it much easier to find and hire specialized services on a just-in-time basis. This development has caused significant disruptions. Two examples are less long-term job security and the weakened ability for workers to advocate for their concerns en masse. However, there’s a positive side.

The network era

The network era is making possible a shift towards decentralized influence and power and away from the dysfunctional features of hierarchical societal and organizational structures that have led to much suffering and misery throughout human history. Today, there’s no reason to pick either positional or network-era power. We can create systems that incorporate the best features of both.

Here’s Harold Jarche again:

“…it is up to all of us to keep working on new structures and systems. This is perhaps the only great work to be done for the next few decades. We have the science and technology to address most of the world’s problems. What we lack are structures that enable transparency and action on behalf of humankind, and not the vested interests of the rich and powerful.”
Harold Jarchechaos and order

This isn’t easy work. When consulting, one of my biggest meeting design challenges is to get the boss’s buy-in. Typically middle management is enthusiastic and onboard. But the most senior decision-maker will occasionally override everyone else in the organization. They make poor design decisions based on obsolete ideas about how people learn and a lack of understanding of how good meeting design can transform communities.

The network era is here, and its effect on power relationships isn’t going away. To improve the relevance and effectiveness of social structures, organizations, and meetings, leaders must understand and accept the potential and value of decentralized influence.

Image attribution: Flickr user thomwoo

Create Powerful Meetings Instead of Power-over Meetings

create powerful meetingsWe all want to create powerful meetings, but the opportunity is often missed.

All meetings incorporate power relationships that fundamentally affect their dynamics and potential. Traditional conferences unconsciously promote and sustain power imbalances between the “speakers” at the front of the room and the audience. Such events invoke a version of power Tom Atlee calls Power-over: “the ability to control, influence, manage, dominate, destroy, or otherwise directly shape what happens to someone or something”.

People often tolerate this form of power in their lives (or seek to wield it) because they hold an underlying belief that when you lose control everything turns to chaos. Meeting stakeholders and planners typically subscribe to this viewpoint because they can’t conceive of (usually because they’ve never experienced) a form of meeting that successfully uses a different kind of power relationship: Power-with.

Power-with

Here’s Tom’s description of Power-with:

“Power-with is the kind of power that arises through connection—connection to ourselves, to each other, to what’s going on, and to everything else. We could describe power-with as holistic partnership power. In its most mature and comprehensive form, it involves our ability to see allies, resources, and possibilities anywhere and everywhere, and to engage with them for mutual and collective benefit.”

“Power-with is not the opposite of power-over, because they can and do co-exist. We see power-with enhancing power-over when work teams collaborate to generate market dominance for their company or when activist alliances overwhelm their opponents in the political battlefield. We can also see it in how PR works with people’s instinctive urges and reactions to manipulate them into certain beliefs and behaviors. On the other hand, we see power-over enhancing power-with in competitions that promote collective benefits and win-win solutions, such as the Olympics (at their best) and households and schools competing for the lowest carbon footprint.”
—Tom Atlee, The Dance of Power-over and Power-with

Using Power-with process — my books contain many examples — in our meetings allows us to potentially partner with, learn from, and connect with everyone at the event, rather than a few pre-chosen presenters.

Tom describes the energetics of Power-with as being like those of a dance or a jazz improvisation, requiring the exercise of “attending to, responding to, learning from, and shifting with the reality—especially the vitality—of what’s around us, what’s within us, what’s in front of us”.

Meetings that include Power-with formats have an additional benefit. They provide participants with experiences where there are “an abundance of people and things to work with everywhere”. This allows us to create powerful meetings.

Conclusion

Finally, Tom points out that Power-with…

“is not about suppressing our own needs and aspirations to serve something or someone else. That is an effort to control ourselves, which is a power-over approach. The essence of positive power-with is mutual or collective benefit: I get my needs met and exercise my best self by helping someone or something else meet its needs and exercise its best self.”

This describes the essence of the energy that drives peer conferences and participant-driven and participation-rich meetings: the pleasure gained through co-creating and experiencing mutual benefit for individuals and the group. It’s why being part of such meetings, rather than designing them or writing about them, is my favorite professional activity.

Such a contrast to the dreary, exhausting, and ultimately unmemorable meetings I used to experience and which are still, unfortunately, still far too common today.

The dark side of stories at events

Photograph of a child holding the antlers of a dead buck lying in the back of a pickup truck. Photo attribution: Flickr user campascca.

Some stories have a dark side. Hans Bleiker tells a story about a group of scientists who spent several years carefully researching how to maintain the health of a deer herd. They determined that some minor changes in state hunting regulations would be very effective. At a public hearing, their entire case was undermined in 15 minutes by the testimony of a guy who loudly protested that his great-grandfather had helped his father shoot his first deer, his father had gone with him to shoot his first deer, and he’d be damned if some bunch of scientists were going to stop him help his son to shoot his first deer.

It’s been hard to miss the deluge of books and articles pointing out (correctly) that presenters who tell relevant, well-told stories have far more impact on listeners than those who recite a litany of facts. It’s not surprising that the most popular and highly paid professional speakers are those with a vivid story to tell — one that often follows some variant of the hero’s journey

Stories have great power to change our minds. They can do wonderful things. Challenge our ingrained beliefs. Make us aware of injustice. Inspire us to be better human beings, and motivate us to act for the greater good.

Unfortunately, some use such power for evil. People can use stories to inflict great damage.

Examples abound

Ronald Reagan’s mythical “welfare queen” has shaped U.S. welfare policy for 40 years. Chimamanda Adichie tells how childhood reading warps our view of the world. Stories of children who developed the symptoms of autism soon after vaccination have led many parents to not vaccinate their children, leading to the resurgence of preventable diseases even though scientific research has shown no connection between vaccination and autism.

Stories are dangerous, because, even with good intentions, stories can be wrong. And, more dangerously, they can be purposefully misleading. A child’s default belief is that the stories they hear are true. We tend to carry that belief into adulthood despite increasing experience that stories can be seriously biased and deceptive. Sadly, it has now become routine for authority figures to publicly lie to achieve their objectives. This is leading to a world where “alternative facts” are becoming the norm.

Some stories have a dark side

Event planners often select and support presenters who get a platform to tell their stories to an audience. While acknowledging the power of stories, let’s not forget that they can evoke dark passions in those who hear them. As people who make events happen, we bear a responsibility to decide whether we want to tacitly support those storytellers among us who use stories for immoral and unethical ends.

Photo attribution: Flickr user campascca

Facilitation, rapt attention, and love

facilitation rapt attention and love: photograph of two men wearing name badges sitting and talking indoorsPerhaps you’re wondering: What’s the connection between facilitation, rapt attention, and love?

Why am I drawn to facilitation? I’ve often heard an uneasy inner voice that wonders if it’s about a desire or need for control and/or power. And yet I know through experience that when I am facilitating well, I have influence but no real control or power.

Then I read this:

“Freud said that psychoanalysis is a ‘cure through love,’ and I think that is essentially correct. The love is conveyed not so much in the content as in the form: the rapt attention of someone who cares enough to interrogate you. The love stows away in the conversation.”
—Psychotherapist and writer Gary Greenberg, interviewed in “Who Are You Calling Crazy?”, The Sun, July 2016

Facilitation is not psychotherapy (though sometimes it may have similar results.) But they both have something in common when performed with skill: the gift of listening closely. And that gift of rapt attention is given out of love—not of the content but through the form.

Though I sometimes want to be in (illusory) control, I am drawn to facilitation out of love.

Facilitation, rapt attention, and love.

Why are you drawn (if, indeed, you are) to facilitation?

Photo attribution: Flickr user alphachimpstudio

We can talk about it

We can talk about it: A photograph of a young woman with blonde hair standing in front of a brick wall. She has a black gag tied around her mouth.

We can’t talk about how we could do things better around here
We can’t talk about what isn’t working
We can’t talk about the countless opportunities we ignore
We can’t talk about what hurts
We can’t talk about dignity
We can’t talk about how to make magic happen
We can’t talk to our boss, our employees, our board, our investors
We can’t talk about the things we can’t talk about

That’s a shame.
—Seth Godin, We can’t talk about it

One of the reasons we feel we can’t talk about things is that we are scared about who might hear. Maybe people who have, or might have, power or influence of some kind over us, like our boss (“You’re fired!“) or colleagues (“He’s weird!”)

Even if we’re at a meeting where none of these people are present, we’re unlikely to say certain things if we’re worried that, somehow, what we say gets back to these people.

Confidentiality

This is why one of the ground rules I ask everyone to agree to at the start of my conferences is about confidentiality:

“What we discuss at this conference will remain confidential. What we share here, stays here.”

I explain that you can still talk about what happened in general terms. (“Most participants thought that implementing the new regulations would lead to increased airline security.”) But not in a way that directly implicates an individual. (“John Smith said that the new regulations were just security theatre.”)

In the twenty-two years since I introduced this ground rule, no one has ever refused to abide by it. And, to my knowledge, no one has ever breached this form of confidentiality.

There’s no ultimate guarantee, of course, that everyone will always honor this agreement. When we share something intimate, at that moment we are trusting those around us. Each person has to decide whether they are prepared to take a risk. Sometimes they will remain quiet. But my observations over the years have led me to believe that this ground rule makes the environment safer for many attendees. The consequence? Some of them will share important sensitive things that would otherwise remain unsaid.

We can talk about it if we feel safe enough. Explaining and obtaining agreement on a confidentiality ground rule can take a minute at the start of an event. In my experience, it’s time well spent.

Photo attribution: Flickr user lewishamdreamer